No Longer An Unfinished Business

Finally, after more than 35 years of being under construction, the Southgate Tower (beside Dasmariñas Village corner of EDSA and Pasong Tamo Extension, here in Makati City) is no longer an unfinished business.

It is now called the alphaland SOUTHGATE TOWER & MALL, owned by Alphaland Corporation which is chaired by former trade and industry czar Roberto Ongpin.

My parents told me that it was built in the 70s era before I was conceived. It was then owned by a Japanese car distributor. Then in the time of President Ferdinand Marcos, the Japanese distributor ran out of money for his project and gave it up to the Philippine National Bank.

Later in the 80s, the Puyat family acquired the property and the unfinished business became their very own. For almost three decades, the Southgate Tower remained, well, a “dream that will never be” landmark of the EDSA-South Super Highway cloverleaf interchange.

Until that day back in early 2008, Mr. Roberto V. Ongpin, chair and CEO of Alphaland Corporation bought it from the Puyat family for ₱1.2 billion. And today, the mall part of the alphaland SOUTHGATE TOWER & MALL opened to the public.

It was set to become the first skyscraper with state-of-the-art offices and high class restaurants. Four decades later, the dream that people have known to be “just a dream” finally materialized.

It also holds a world record for being the longest under construction building in the world, at least according to (if I remember correctly) Bitoy’s World which is a Tagalized version of Ripley’s Believe It or Not (again if I remember it correctly).

I arrived there at 8:00am today but nothing is happening, I didn’t even see any ribbon cutting ceremony anywhere. Really hungry (I haven’t eaten my breakfast yet), my first visit was my favorite fastfood chain Jollibee, which opened at 10:00am (as ordered by the mall management).

They gave me a Jollibee mug for being the branch’s second customer (my 2-hour wait wasn’t unfruitful!!)

10:00am was their opening on opening day. According to the Jollibee staff, they will open starting tomorrow at 6:00 in the morning and with it comes Jollibee’s delicious breakfast meals. They’re occupying the corner of the mall in front of EDSA-Pasong Tamo, so imagine this branch “fishing men”.

Once full and stuffed-up (no one can tease me inside the mall to eat :p), I visited the newly opened mall.

The Southgate Tower entrance inside the mall

(also the entrance to the mall if you’re coming from the basement parking)

The list of stores

1st Floor / Ground Floor

Jollibee

Chowking

Mang Inasal

Mr. Quickie

Teriyaki Boy

Tapa King diner

Reyes Barbecue

Dunkin Donuts

The Sizzlin’ Pepper Steak

Deco’s Original La Paz Batchoy (Since 1938)

Tsoko.nut

Le Coeur de France

Hen Lin

Booksale

Western Union

Tivoli Money Changer

LBC

BDO

Super8 Grocery Warehouse

The Generics Pharmacy

Fujifilm

Makati Luxery Jewelry and Loans by Tambunting

2d Floor

Gudsilog

Gonuts Donuts

Japan Store

David’s Salon

Dermcare

Puplquest Dentist

Office Warehouse

3d Floor

Tiangge (Celphones, DVDs, VCDs)

Gametrix

Destiny Point Game Studio

CD-R King (now it’s nearer than ever)

Bee Travel and Tours

Smokey’s

Foodcourt (as of today, there are only tables and chairs. Bring your own food for now.)

There are four entrances

The Pasong Tamo Extension Entrance

Two in front of EDSA

At the third floor from the MRT Magallanes/Mantrade Station

Other details

The Mall building have 6 floors

The top most floor (in the old building, the roof top in my view) will be San Miguel’s restaurants

There are two public screens viewable high-up of the Tower itself. One facing West, the other East.

There is a basement parking. Please do not forget this: if you want to park, be sure to drop-off your passengers in front of the Pasong Tamo Extension Entrance. If you drop them off in front of the EDSA entrance, you have no choice but to take a U-turn at EDSA-Ayala.

There are plenty of Jeepneys parked along Pasong Tamo Extension, do not be mad at them, they do not have a terminal to this day.

See all the photos

Is a self-confessed bibliophile and technophile other than being an early adopter, an avid gamer, a geek, nerd, role-player, anime otaku, and trekker.

His first online project was in 1998 when he launched the unofficial website for Ansalon MUD (a text-based, telnet online game) and his own community forums Laibcoms.Community. By 2003 he created his work blog GM-Yukino which grew into gameshogun™, Snoworld™, and techmagus™ over the years.